Semantic Studies with Interviewees

According to Krippendorff (2006: 161), “a second method is to interview users to elicit adjectives that could be used to characterize an artifact or the practices it supports and to analyze their responses statistically.” Focus groups can be established for proposals that elicit appropriate adjectives. There are vast amount of study according to this kind of method.

In the case of designing products with specific and intended semantic qualities, PSA (product semantic analysis) method provides a structured process in which the intended qualities can be identified and described in terms of a intended product semantic profile, and then the design solution can be evaluated and compared against the desired profile.

PSA (Figure 3.35) was developed by Wikström (2006) The method comprises several steps as follows:

1. “Interviews with consumers and producers/designers to identify the adjectives for the product domain.”

2. “Reduction of adjectives and construction of semantic scale and instrument including preferred and non-preferred expressions. A visual, analogue scale is recommended for increased sensitivity. The scale is anchored in two points with a neutral middle (maximum value – neutral – maximum value). Instead of using adjectives with opposite meanings, however, only one adjective is used, e.g. ‘masculine’, while the other end is anchored in ‘the opposite’.”

3. “Interviews with consumers and/or producers/designers to identify a desired product semantic profile. This will show the desired strengths of different expressions.”

4. “Finally, consumers ratings of the perceived expression of a product design using the instrument.”

Figure 3.35: Product semantic analysis (Wikström, 2006)

Jordan (2002) conducts a study to explore “the personalities of products” with relation to the obtainable adjective pairs. The study takes place in two sessions consisting of brainstorm and product personality assignment (PPA) with four participants. In the first session, participants barainstorming the descriptors words on given characters such as personal friend/enemy, a liked/disliked film character and a liked/disliked public figure so 209 different words are noted on a flipchart. Then all the words were divided into

groups of similar descriptions and identified under generic titles that yields 17 personality dimensions at the end. These are kind/unkind, honest/dishonest, serious-minded/light-hearted,bright/dim, stable/unstable, narcissistic/humble, flexible/inflexible, authoritarian/liberal, value-driven/non-value-driven, extrovert/introvert, complex/simple, excessive/moderate,conformist/rebel, energetic/unenergetic,violent/gentle, naive/cynical, pessimistic/optimistic. At the second session, a questionnaire was prepared with these 17 dimensions of personality and photographs of two pairs of products in 7 different product class such as iron, shaver, shaver bag, epilator, air cleaner, hair dryer (Figure 3.36) and coffee maker. After marking the adjective scales according to product pairs, the statistical analysis produces strong support to the idea that assigning personalities to the products are meaningful and there is a common perceived personality across the three products of a particular brand.

Figure 3.36: Semantic differential questionnaire for hair dryers (Jordan, 2002)

A similar but more specific study was conducted by Govers and Schoormans (2005) in order to show the product personality that positively influences consumer preference through a congruence effect. The study was also divided into two phases that, firstly, the product-personality congruence was measured then user-image congruence was tested by using 12 stimuli from 4 different product class: screwdrivers, soap-dispensers, coffeemakers and table wine. (Figure 3.37) The first phase consisted of face-to-face interviews with 48 participants. After a test-run that a respondent had to describe some famous persons by using personality descriptors, 12 stimuli had been shown one by one and the respondent was asked to describe its personality. Then the respondent, by keeping the personality description in mind, filled out the questionnaire to measure the experienced product-personality congruence with that stimulus and had repeated for each stimulus which took about 45 minutes. In the second part of the interview, for almost 15 minutes, another questionnaire was filled to evaluate each stimulus for the consumer preference. The second phase was answering a mail questionnaire of 12 pages that filled by 37 of 48 participants. As the result, respondents used an average of 4.44 (n

= 48, SD =2.02) personality characteristics for each product variant that figure 3.37 gives an impression of the product personality of the stimuli. Conclusively, people are said to prefer products with a product personality that matches their self-image and this positive effect of product-personality congruence is found to be independent of the user-image congruence effect.

Figure 3.37: Personality characteristics used to describe the stimuli per product variant (Govers and Schoormans, 2005)

A more qualitative and culturally based method is product personality profiling (PPP) as a projective technique adapted from market research (McDonagh et al. 2002). The aim is to find out the target consumer group by asking participants to fill in questionnaires during focus group sessions. In a short time, participants evaluate a given product by imagining a person with specific personality, also involving information about his/her lifestyle such as gender, age, occupation, etc. It is recommended to compare the responses with a subsequent group discussion to further understand the participant’s choices. The technique is said to be applicable during the stages of product development and during the stage of reseaching user needs prior to concept design. Figure 3.38 depicts a version of PPP questionnaire which is filled through rows and columns. Its drawbacks are the need for preventing the participant filling in the form by row (by avoiding focusing on each product separately) and the lack of imagination to find suitable examples. So Figure 3.39 presents a new version of the form which shows only one product per page and provides a range of examples. As a major limitation, both questionnaires generate complex data need to be read between lines and to be interpreted very carefully.

Figure 3.38: Product personality profiling questionnaire with responses (Bruseberg and McDonagh-Philip, 2001)

Figure 3.39: A new version of PPP form with responses (McDonagh et al. 2002)

4. METHODOLOGY

4.1. Aim

This study aims at visual evaluation of automobile design by semantic interpretation. For this reason, the research is intended to collect data through representations of selective automobiles. Then extracted data need to be evaluated to compare the perception of participants with the intended characteristics of representatives cars.

Osgood’s semantic differential is choosen as the method of this study because of its advantages of implementation. A semantic differential survey has been prepared with the photographs of four representative cars and the table of descriptive adjective scales.

The questionnaire is intended as a pleasurable form which can be enjoyed by the automobile enthusiasts and can be easily filled by marking the scales.

4.2. Semantic Differential Study